A spokesman for Korea Exchange (KRX) on Dec. 16 said the stock market will end stock trading for 2010 on Dec. 30 and resume it on Jan. 3, 2011. Traditionally, KRX staffers and stock traders will throw little slips of paper toward the ceiling to celebrate the end of this year¡¯s trading. Dailies usually carry, and TV news programs show photos of such slips of paper flying just like snowflakes inside the KRX building amid cheers from KRX staffers and stock traders.

Korean people started trading stocks in 1930. But Korea Stock Exchange, a modern stock exchange, opened in March 1956, with stocks of 12 companies listed. A stock market is a public network of economic transactions for the trading of company stocks, or shares, at agreed prices, which are listed on a stock exchange. Usually, stocks are listed and traded on the stock market. Every country has a stock exchange, such as the New York Stock Exchange and London Stock Exchange, as well as the KRX in Korea.

Korea¡¯s stock market is in fact represented by two markets - KOSPI (Korea Composite Stock Price Index), the index of all common stocks traded on KRX, and KOSDAQ (Korean Securities Dealers Automated Quotations), a trading board of KRX.

KOSPI, which was introduced in 1983, is the index of all common stocks traded on the Stock Market Division of the KRX. It's the representative stock market index of Korea. KOSPI is comparable to the Dow Jones Industrial Average or S&P 500 in the U.S. KOSPI began with the base value of 100 on Jan. 4, 1980. About 770 firms are listed on KOSPI, whose daily volume amounts to hundreds of millions of shares or trillions of won.

KOSDAQ was set up by the Korea Financial Investment Association as an independent stock market in 1996, it is now operated as SME Market Division of KRX. More than 1,000 small and medium-sized companies are listed on KOSDAQ.

Stock market indices are a method of measuring sections of the stock market. Many of them are cited by news or financial services. The indices represent the performance of the stock market and reflect the investor sentiment on the state of the economy. The indices of KOSPI and KOSDAQ represent the overall movement of the Korean stock market, respectively.

The KOSPI index, whose base value was 100 in the 1980s, closed at 2,925.20 on Dec. 17, 2010, while the KOSAQ index closed at 510.74 on the same day. KOSPI crossed the 2,000 level for the first time on July 24, 2007. This shows what remarkable growth the KOSPI has achieved. A high KOSPI index means that the economy is that much lively overall. Simply put, if the KOSPI index is high, companies are engaged in that much lively economic activities and much investment is made in such companies.